The garbled windows on the antique structure
Looked a spectre.
Their sills colored dark by the coiled foliage
Untamed, free.
The visible darkness within, sure camouflages
A secret or secret soul, spirit or ghost.
No one lives there, no one wants to.
A habitat too musty for the living present.
Yet, the seven broken steps that led to the cottage door,
Sure seemed a favorite haunt for
Frolicking children by the score.
The silent rooms sheltered sure
The dreamy and the scheming humanity of yore.
But no one lives there, no one wants to.
The banyan and the pine that grew and wasted
And grew again, stood sentinel
In straight patience,
Watching the happy and the hapless
Of generations past, spacing the yard.
They shelter still, creatures
Winged and wingless.
Strange, how nature is sacrosanct
But things man-made sacrilegious.
Even so, the house fissured and decayed
Priceless value to its ruins attached.
For, those moving about the old mansion
Color it in shades of scintillating imagination
Mixing time, space and action.
The specter Good God! Turns into
A thing of beauty, rare and treasured.
Sender’s
brief bio-data
Dr.
(mrs) Jaya Lakshmi Rao V.
Reader
in English, Mrs. A.V.N. College, Visakhapatnam.